On February 23, President Barack Obama announced his decision to end combat operations in Iraq by August 31, 2010, before an audience of US Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Despite his opposition to the war before becoming president, his promise to quickly "end" the war if elected, and his never using the term winning in his speech, Obama tacitly acknowledged what is undeniable--the US is winning the Iraq War. The war's legacy must await the judgment of history, but one thing is certain, the US military has finally cast out the Vietnam demon.

The Vietnam War bitterly divided America and left the country troubled for a generation. Domestically, it and Watergate shook Americans’ confidence in their government and altered the fabric of American politics. Internationally, it had a major impact on US access and influence around the world and weakened our relationships with many friends and allies. It was a seminal event in American history.

Most Americans, those who had not been directly affected by it, put the War behind them and moved on. Vietnam War protesters found new causes or cut their hair, put on suits and dresses, and joined the legions of nine-to-five working Americans. Vietnam War veterans and their families carried the scars and the memories with them but did their best to cover them up.

A comparatively small group of junior officers and enlisted men out of the 3.4 million who served in Vietnam remained in the military and fifteen years later found themselves leading men and women to a quick and decisive victory in the First Gulf War. A new, better trained and better prepared US military with high-tech precision weapons had arisen from the ashes of the old one, but the Vietnam War demon still possessed it.

In 2003, following another quick victory after the spearhead thrust to Baghdad, the US military faltered. It was as if, at the moment of triumph, the ghost of Vietnam had come out of the night and enveloped it in a mist that clouded its thinking and made it temporarily forget the lessons it paid so dearly to learn. For nearly four years, using virtually the same failed search and destroy strategy that led to defeat in Vietnam, it increasingly appeared that America was headed for another ignominious defeat.

Then, a new Secretary of Defense, a new commanding general in Iraq, and the troops looked the demon in the eye, executed a new strategy, and turned things around. Not since the British victory in the Malayan counterinsurgency of the 1950s has a foreign power so effectively defeated a committed insurgent force.

The public face of victory is General David Petraeus. Between his tour in Iraq as a lieutenant general and his return to command all forces there, he re-wrote US counterinsurgency doctrine at the Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He and President George W. Bush, who authorized the surge, deserve much of the credit for how the Iraq War is turning out. A great deal of credit, however, also must go to the troops.

Those of us who fought in Vietnam did everything our leaders asked of us. We laid down our lives in great numbers. We fought heroically in the face of a capable and committed enemy. The overwhelming majority of us did our best. No matter what we thought about the war, if we didn’t do it for our country, we did it for buddies. But we weren’t as well trained or prepared as our present-day counterparts. We didn’t have the high-tech tools. Millions of us, draftees and regulars alike, fought one-year wars nine times. Some of us did it two or three times, and then we came home to a country that didn’t appreciate us.

Today’s volunteer warriors have done everything their leaders asked of them. They are, however, better trained and equipped, more prepared, and, on the whole, better led than we were. With their high-tech weapons and the skill with which they use them, they bring down death and destruction on the enemy with far fewer US casualties and civilian deaths than their World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War counterparts.

At the same time, they successfully communicate across language barriers with peoples and cultures far removed from their own. They exhibit a broad array of specialized skills people would not normally expect them to possess. They operate and rotate as cohesive units that built more than they destroy. In Iraq they’ll leave behind the only functioning democracy in the Arab world. They will come home victorious to a country where the US military is the most respected institution in America.

When this war is over and America's warriors return to their families and less harrowing assignments they will think and write and study the Iraq War. They will refine US doctrine and strategy. They’ll develop requirements for new and more effective weapons, and they’ll prepare and train new recruits for the next war. And so long as America’s leaders understand and appreciate who and what they are and what they’re capable of, and use them properly America will remain proud, prosperous, and free. Friendly countries will honor and respect us. Our enemies will fear us.

Whether or not we should or shouldn’t have gotten involved in either war will remain a point of controversy for many years to come. America, indeed democracy, is all about differences of opinion. Wars have profound consequences; that’s why we argue so much about whether or not to wage them. American forces remain in Afghanistan, they're still a long way from winning that war. But now they can fight it without the Vietnam demon whispering in their ears.